a person where

[Neal Whitman]

I'm pretty tolerant of relative "where" referring to things that aren't
strictly places, such as (from COCA) "you're entering a stage of life where
you're going to have to be exceptionally mature"; with a combination of
thinking of "where" as equivalent to "in which" and imagining the abstract
thing they're describing as being portrayed on a map or diagram.

It gets harder in examples like this (also from COCA): "One of those things
where you go why did nt anybody ever think of it before?" I can see "where"
getting more abstract, and have to mentally translate it to something like
"for which."

But Kim Kardashian really blew my mind when she said, regarding her short,
short marriage: "I'm a person where if I'm in love, you can't tell me
anything." In this example, "where" has achieved the all-purpose
relativizing status of "such that". She's not the only one; a Google search
for "person where" brings up examples like, "I'm a person where that if I
focus on what I want, I believe that I can achieve it," and "I'm a person
where skys are the limit." In COCA, there are 30 hits, many irrelevant, but
some like "the type of person where you had to go out of your way to meet
him first," and "I was the kind of person where everything else other than
me was more important." I don't find any relevant hits in COHA or BNC.

Neal

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